"Can you read that, sir ?" "No." "All the better for you: Spanish fetters, general." He showed a white scar on his shoulder.

"Can you read that?
This is what I cut out of it," and he handed the governor a little round stone as big and almost as regular as a musket-ball.
"Humph! that could hardly have been fired from a French musket." "Can you read this ?" and he showed him a long cicatrix on his other arm.
"Knife I think," said the governor.
"You are right, sir: Spanish knife.

Can you read this ?" and opening his bosom he showed a raw wound on his breast.
"Oh, the devil!" cried the governor.
The wounded man put his rusty coat on again, and stood erect, and haughty, and silent.
The general eyed him, and saw his great spirit shining through this man.
The more he looked the less could the scarecrow veil the hero from his practised eye.

He said there must be some mistake, or else he was in his dotage; after a moment's hesitation, he added, "Be seated, if you please, and tell me what you have been doing all these years." "Suffering." "Not all the time, I suppose." "Without intermission." "But what?
suffering what ?" "Cold, hunger, darkness, wounds, solitude, sickness, despair, prison, all that man can suffer." "Impossible! a man would be dead at that rate before this." "I should have died a dozen deaths but for one thing; I had promised her to live." There was a pause.

Then the old soldier said gravely, but more kindly, to the young one, "Tell me the facts, captain" (the first time he had acknowledged his visitor's military rank).
An hour had scarce elapsed since the rusty figure was stopped by the sentinels at the gate, when two glittering officers passed out under the same archway, followed by a servant carrying a furred cloak.